Building empathy in the workplace is my number one goal when colleagues and I use improvisational theater tools in on-site, face-to-face workshops. It’s not about performing or comedy; it’s about broadening the soft skills of emotional intelligence. Developing verbal and non-verbal behavior, supporting our partners, and engaging in face-to-face conversation. A solution for building empathy in communication and collaboration.

Sounds like some X-Men-like psychic superpower right? Well, what if I told you that anyone can have this uncanny ability and use its strength and charm to have successful conversations?

Well, you can. The superpower I refer to is called empathy.

But this skill–and it is a learned skill available to anyone–is often misunderstood because there are variations of it. I’ll get to the science of it shortly.

How Do You Define Empathy?

To better grasp what people mean when they talk about empathy, the most common uses for empathy fall in these categories:

1. The type of empathy where we directly feel what others feel.

2. The type of empathy where you imagine yourself in others’ shoes.

3. The type of empathy where you imagine the world, or a situation, from someone else’s point of view rather than your own.

4. The type of empathy that researchers sometimes call “mind reading.” It involves being good at reading others’ emotions and body language.

Where do you fit in?

The Research Behind This Superpower

If you’re skeptical that this is touchy-feely campfire nonsense with no business value in a transactional world, consider the research.

Global training giant Development Dimensions International (DDI) has studied leadership for 46 years. They believe that the essence of optimal leadership can be boiled down to having dozens of “fruitful conversations” with others, inside and outside your organization.

Expanding on this belief, they assessed over 15,000 leaders from more than 300 organizations across 20 industries and 18 countries to determine which conversational skills have the highest impact on overall performance.

The findings, published in their High Resolution Leadership report, are revealing. While skills such as “encouraging involvement of others” and “recognizing accomplishments” are important, empathy--yes, empathy–rose to the top as the most critical driver of overall performance.

Empathy in the modern workplace is not just about being able to see things from another perspective. It’s the cornerstone of teamwork, good innovative design, and smart leadership. It’s about helping others feel heard and understood.

This whole premise does have an air of genius about it, considering that when you take on the perspective of those you are talking with, it engages people on the spot. This can be a difference maker. That’s the good news.

The Bad News

The DDI report reveals a dire need for leaders with the skill of empathy. Only four out of 10 frontline leaders assessed in their massive study were proficient or strong on empathy.

Richard S. Wellins, senior vice president of DDI and one of the authors of the High-Resolution Leadership report, had this to say in a Forbes interview a year ago:

We feel [empathy] is in serious decline. More concerning, a study of college students by University of Michigan researchers showed a 34 percent to 48 percent decline in empathic skills over an eight-year period. These students are our future leaders!

We feel there are two reasons that account for this decline. Organizations have heaped more and more on the plates of leaders, forcing them to limit face-to-face conversations. Again, DDI research revealed that leaders spend more time managing than they do “interacting.” They wish they could double their time spent interacting with others. The second reason falls squarely on the shoulders of technology, especially mobile smart devices. These devices have become the de rigueur for human interactions. Sherry Turkle, in her book, Reclaiming Conversation, calls them “sips of conversations.”

Final Thoughts

Keep in mind that empathy shows up in different ways, as I mentioned at the beginning. It’s not just “feeling.” Think how it can translate to both verbal and non-verbal behavior so the person hearing you will feel your empathic nature. And, it goes without saying, people see right through you if your empathy is not expressed in a sincere and authentic way.

Don’t underestimate for a second its true potential. Begin developing leaders to learn this relational skill for competitive advantage.

Your ability to empathize, as a leader, will make a difference in the performance of others. And it is critical to good teamwork.

“We start from a place of acceptance, with the ground rule that everything you say is right.” In my work of facilitating Medical Improv workshops, I’ve learned that It’s not about becoming a performer, or being funny. It’s about taking risks and focusing on others.

Improv for Anxiety: A Stand-Up Therapeutic Tool?

Kathleen Louden

CHICAGO — Even after attending a residential program to treat anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder, Annie Clark was unable to make eye contact or speak to strangers.

But after attending Improv for Anxiety, a unique therapeutic program developed in concert with The Second City, Chicago’s famous improv-based sketch comedy troupe, she has a newfound ability to interact socially and speak in public.

“It was a gift to find my voice,” Clark said.

Known as Improv for Anxiety, the joint program between The Second City and Panic/Anxiety Recovery Center on the city’s North Side combines improvisation and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) to combat social phobia.

Improv for Anxiety is thought to be the only currently operating program of its kind in the world, according to its founder, Mark Pfeffer, LMFT, a CBT therapist and director of Panic/Anxiety Recovery Center.

Billed as a social anxiety “boot camp,” the program began in August 2011 to help adults with moderate social anxiety disorder, also known as social phobia. A separate program is now available for teenagers with social anxiety.

Pfeffer founded the 8-week program to help patients overcome their fear and avoidance of social situations due to what he called “exquisite sensitivity to scrutiny from others.”

“This workshop stemmed from my frustration as a therapist for clients with social anxiety, who wouldn’t do their [psychotherapy] homework,” Pfeffer told Medscape Medical News.

“I wondered what would be accessible and affordable and would work for treating social anxiety,” he said.

After taking improvisation classes at The Second City Training Center in Chicago himself, Pfeffer discovered it was a safe and fun environment that had the potential to build confidence, improve public speaking skills, and boost comfort in social settings. He began to recommend these courses to his clients with anxiety, but found they would not attend.

As a result, he designed a program to meet the specific needs of this patient population and teamed up with Second City instructors, who led groups of 8 to 12 participants at weekly sessions.

Since its introduction, approximately 200 people have attended the program, Pfeffer said.

Why Does It Work?

Although there is little scientific research demonstrating the efficacy of improvisation as therapy, Pfeffer said anecdotal evidence suggests “people are making life decisions that previously were unavailable to them, such as going on a job interview. Basically, they now have quality of life.”

Improvisation is an effective therapeutic tool for managing social anxiety for several reasons, he said, including the fact that it is “ensemble based.” Continue Reading

“This population needs acceptance from the tribe, and we become their tribe,” Pfeffer said. “And, it’s hard to be terrified when you’re laughing.”

The Second City Training Center instructor Piero Procaccini.

Many improvisation skills can help ease social anxiety, said Piero Procaccini, an instructor for The Second City Training Center in Chicago. He facilitated improvisational techniques for a group of ADAA preconference delegates.

“Improv involves taking risks,” Procaccini said. “We start from a place of acceptance, with the ground rule that everything you say is right.”

The most important principle of improvisation, according to Procaccini, is what he describes as the “Yes and…” tenet. In improv, this phrase moves the action forward and shows acceptance and collaboration, he explained.

Having learned this principle in Second City and iO Chicago improv classes, Becca Barish, MSW, said she now uses it to treat her clients at Panic/Anxiety Recovery Center.

“We can say to a client, who mentions an unhealthy behavior, ‘Yes, and… when you do that, what happens? Does it take you to a place you want to be?’ ” Barish told the audience.

Yes, And…

Other principles of improvisation, according to Procaccini, are the following:

Reserve judgment of yourself and others.

Be in the moment.

Be others focused.

Be willing to take action.

Improv exercises slowly build confidence by encouraging patients to engage in activities that make most people uncomfortable. During the workshop, participants played a series of short games in a large group.

One game involved passing an imaginary red ball to each other while shouting out “red ball.” In another game, a person voluntarily formed a live “statue” in the center of the group and could not leave until a second person joined in.

After each game, participants discussed how they felt during the exercise.

Later, ADAA workshop participants improvised giving eulogies at an imaginary funeral. They were asked to spontaneously incorporate a phrase from a film or song, which others had previously written on a slip of paper.

In Their Shoes

Procaccini said Second City instructors find that the group benefits the most when the goal of the exercise is not explained ahead of time.

Melanie Santos, PsyD, a Chicago-based clinical psychologist who attended the ADAA workshop, said that the improvisational exercises gave her “a better idea of what it feels to be in the shoes of someone with social anxiety.”

She also added that she would apply some of the principles she learned to future therapy sessions.

“I hope to focus on encouraging acceptance and willingness to put yourself out there,” she said.

Dr. Santos acknowledged that it is often difficult to encourage people with social anxiety to engage in exposure therapy, despite accompanying them into real-world settings.

She said she would consider doing group exposure therapy, which one Improv for Anxiety program graduate suggested would make anxious clients more comfortable.

Pfeffer said the people who attend the program are initially fearful to register for it but that “they often have tried everything else, and they want to get better.”

In addition to social anxiety, there are other improvisational therapy courses to help individuals with autism spectrum disorder and, elsewhere, even Alzheimer’s disease.

Joy of Being Silly

As part of their recovery, some participants choose to go on to more advanced improvisation courses through The Second City Training Center. After completing these higher-level classes, they have the opportunity to perform an improvisational show at The Second City.

Program graduates are invited to speak at new Improv for Anxiety classes as part of their recovery, and several did so at this workshop. Dr. Santos said she was impressed with their self-reported improvement.

One graduate, Maren Lovgren, not only shared the story of recovery from her fears, she did a standup comedy routine — without any apparent nervousnes — that had the audience laughing.

For Lovgren, anxiety was standing in the way of her desire to be a performer. “Before [the improv class], I thought fear was my enemy,” she said. “Now I call it my numb hands and run toward it.”

Currently a performer and comedy writer, Lovgren said she felt the support of her classmates, noting, “We were not competitive. We were not fighting to be on Saturday Night Live.”

Clark told the audience that her experience in the program differed from past therapy sessions that were “drudgery, and everyone cried all the time.”